Streaming Earth Video to Document Planet

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A near-real-time video stream of the Earth, taken from the
International Space Station, is slated to go live this fall. The
project will enable everything from the detailed monitoring of
mass movements of people, such as refugees, to out-of-this-world
marriage proposals. This will be the first time streaming video
of the Earth will be available from an orbiting satellite.

The upcoming stream, called UrtheCast (pronounced
"Earth-cast"), will have a resolution of 1 meter (3.3 feet) and
will be free, Scott Larson, UrtheCast's president, told
TechNewsDaily. It will broadcast with a delay of about an hour to
90 minutes. Its resolution isn't sharp enough to pick out faces,
Larson said, but there's still plenty the UrtheCast cameras will
be able to see, including groups of people, buildings, trees,
roads and fields.

"I mean, you'll never see the guy mowing the lawn in his
backyard," Larson said. "But you will be able to see a white golf
cart on a green lawn."

Larson's company also plans to stream lower-resolution images of
the Earth starting in the first half of 2013.

Pictures and video for everyone

On the UrtheCast platform, people will be able to watch videos,
save them and search for them, just as they do now on YouTube,
Larson said. UrtheCast will end up gathering images of cities
from several angles, so the Canada-based startup will be able to
make 3D models of cities for people to explore.

Another fun feature: Users will be able to enter in their
addresses to find the next time UrtheCast will have their houses
in its sights. (On average, the International Space Station
passes over a given address every eight to 10 days.) Larson
suggested people could gather their friends, put them all in
white T-shirts, and have them stand in a green field to spell out
messages, such as "WILL YOU MARRY ME?," just as
the International Space Station goes by.

Such services will be free, and the application programming
interface will be freely available for developers to make apps
using UrtheCast video and photos. To pay for the free features,
Larson plans to sell still photos and videos of the Earth with
the same resolution as the free products, but with additional
information.

National governments could buy videos of their home countries in
order to monitor crops, for example. The paid product would not
only show video of the crops, but also have additional data, such
as the height of the wheat it sees. Governments use such data to
decide whether to import or export foods, Larson explained.
Governments, defense agencies and other industries spent
$1.4 billion on satellite imagery in 2011, so UrtheCast
will be entering a well-established market.

How it works

UrtheCast is now working with engineering firms in Canada and the
U.K. to build two cameras, one high-resolution and one
medium-resolution. Larson expects to finish the cameras this
summer. UrtheCast then plans to ship the cameras to Russia, where
they'll go up into space in two separate Soyuz
rockets in the fall.

The Russian aerospace firm RSC Energia has agreed to install the
UrtheCast cameras underneath the International Space Station and
downlink the cameras' photos and videos to stations on Earth. On
the ground, UrtheCast staff will process the imagery and publish
it to their website.

Meanwhile, the company plans to send to space a less
sophisticated camera to be installed inside the International
Space Station. The camera will provide streaming images of the
Earth starting in the first half of 2013. The camera won't be
able to show people or vehicles like its more sophisticated
cousins coming in the fall, but, said Larson, it'll show
" nice
pictures of Earth from space."

Potential projects

A couple groups have already started projects with UrtheCast in
mind. The company has signed an agreement with the United Nations
Institute for Training and Research to provide coverage of
situations such as droughts and mass movements. UrtheCast is also
partnering with DeforestACTION, a nonprofit that's recruiting
volunteers to pore over UrtheCast videos for signs of rainforest
removal in Indonesia.

"I think there are all kinds of apps and games and contests and
things that people will create," Larson said. "Some apps will be
trivial. Others will be profound."